All of Our Cards
by The Pigeon One
Summary: Two-shot. He had set his flag in no-man's-land, but when he eventually came around, he hoped it wasn't too late for him to love her. He put all of his cards on the table, hoping it wasn't in vain.
1. Robin

Saw Josh Groban on Graham Norton the other day. Not only was the most hilarious couch ever, I fell in love with "Higher Window" and then felt obligated to write a oneshot. So here's that oneshot. Also; I know I'm messing with the comics a lot in this, but just go along with it. It's not like they don't have complicated plotlines in the comics themselves. What does it matter if the timeline's a bit messed up?

All Our Cards

By nature, both Raven and Robin were quiet, observant people. They were not the type to express their emotions openly like the rest of the team. They were subtle, the time of people to set lines and expect them not to be crossed without telling anyone that the line had been drawn at all. Usually, the other Titans respected this and saw the lines without having to look too hard.

The problem was when the lines were crossed. It wasn't something that happened often, and it was usually Beast Boy's fault, but when it did, Robin knew Raven would be there for him, and vice-versa.

Robin's relationship with Starfire had been short lived. The naïve princess didn't understand how to read his body language or hear the subtleties in his voice when he spoke, and in the end, she couldn't take his closed personality. He had gone to Raven with this after Starfire had broken up with him, appearing behind his best friend on the roof as she read, not saying a word. Feeling his presence, she turned around and, upon seeing his face, put her book down and got up to hug him.

It was that sort of wordless communication that Robin cherished, the kind that only the best of friends had. He had been very upset and torn up over the breakup, and Raven had known it before he had even spoken a word.

Robin, if he was honest, had set his flag in no-man's land after the breakup, feeling very torn up about the whole situation, feeling like it was entirely his fault, even though the guilty party was made up of two.

He felt like he had drawn his line, once again, about his love life, and after Starfire, he hadn't planned on having any romantic connections with any one for quite some time. He had had enough, as far as he was concerned, and he wasn't anywhere near ready to put his heart on the line again.

Or, so he thought.

He wasn't quite sure when he noticed that he and Raven had a more dynamic relationship that the rest of the team, but he slowly came to realize that he got on better with her than the rest of them. He realized that he watched her more carefully, paid more attention to her. Some part of his mind argued that it was because Raven was someone you had to pay attention to to know what was going on. Some other part knew that it was because he had become attracted to her.

But then, things started to drastically change around Titans Tower.

Ever since the defeat of the Brotherhood of Evil, the various Titan allies that had been acquired drifted in and out of the West Tower. It was really the headquarters, and Robin understood and dealt with it. Raven, not so much.

Ironically enough, however, it was Starfire leaving on a diplomatic mission to Tamaran that finally did the irrevocable damage. Robin had been spending a much need weekend away, knowing that Starfire was on Tamaran, but when he came back, Raven was gone. He hadn't thought anything of until he saw Cyborg, and then he knew. Raven hadn't just gone, she had _left_.

He hadn't known what had caused it. For all that he knew her the best, Robin had not seen her departure from her home coming. And he thought that perhaps part of her going was his fault, precisely _because_ he hadn't seen it coming. What good was their warm and silent symmetry if he could tell that she was happy?

It was times like these when Robin felt like he needed to be reminded why anyone would chose to be a superhero. It was a miserable life, and, in the end, left you with nothing.

FIVE YEARS LATER

Richard settled into his new Bludhaven apartment with something one might call trepidation. The apartment, not to mention the town, was filthy and almost made his skin crawl. Crime was rampant and he had almost been mugged twice in the span of ten minutes.

Of course, that was why he had come here. It was close to Gotham, and, by extension, close to Batman, though he still wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. And, obviously, the crime was so bad he had a hard time finding a friendly face in the crowd. Everyone walked with their heads down, averting their gazes from any and all passersby.

The Titans had broken up not long ago. Raven's departure, though sad, had done nothing serious to the team dynamic, in terms of fighting crime. After a few months of lacking a fifth Titan, they had come across Donna Troy, Wonder Woman's step-sister, adopted her as Wonder Girl, and tried to pretend that she could replace Raven.

Dynamically, she had been a great addition. She filled the gaps that had been left by Raven when they went off to take care of trouble, and she was funny. They appreciated her company, liked her, even, but she was no Raven.

They had all gone their separate ways, now. Somehow, it only made Richard, now Nightwing, miss Raven even more. He had had contact with her a few times, and he knew that she still spoke with Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg, but none of them knew where she was or what she was doing with her life. She merely checked in with them on occasion, and while she knew what everyone else was doing, Richard knew that none of them had any idea what she was doing. They had never thought to ask, and she had certainly never told.

Sometimes, Richard thought of calling her and asking her if he could come and visit her, but he stopped himself as he picked up the phone every time. He wasn't sure why, but he felt like Raven was a part of his past that he shouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. He was somehow very certain that if she had stayed, they would have grown closer than they already were and would have started something very special.

And yet, he felt it was too late. Contact or no, she had walked out of his life, and he was wounded enough that he wasn't sure that he wanted her back in his life.

In the morning, Richard donned a suit and drove down to the police station as the new Detective Grayson. Unlike the population of Bludhaven, the men and women of the police force were kind and open, if a little haggard looking. But Richard liked his new job as a homicide detective, even if it kept him busy and forced him to deal with the scum of the Earth. He was doing the community a double service – Detective Grayson by day and Nightwing by night.

Crime went down in Bludhaven quite drastically with his arrival, though it was in no way better than somewhere like Ventura, California, which boasted one of the most crime free populations in America. But if it was just a little safer to walk the streets, Bludhaven had Nightwing and Detective Grayson to thank.

It was with this in mind when Richard walked into a coffee shop late at night, tired after a long day in the squad room, but ready for patrol that night. He hoped that it was going to be quite one; he had had a rough day dealing with murderers and he didn't want to have to deal with many more.

He saw her at the counter, a cup of what was obviously not coffee in her hand, a small smile on her lips as she talked to the girl behind the bar.

He recognized her at once; how could he not? All of the times he had missed at her came back at him full force, causing him to take a step back. Memories assaulted him, and a part of him wanted to turn around and simply walk out of the little café without acknowledging her. That would certainly be the easy way out.

Except, he never took the easy way out.

Steeling his resolve he walked up to her and tapped her on he shoulder. She turned around slowly, her eyes reflecting her emotions as they always had.

"Raven,"

She shook her head, whether or not to contradict him or dispel her confusion he couldn't tell. "My name's Rachael, not Raven. You've got the wrong girl." She turned back around and resumed her conversation with the barista, shrugging in response to something the girl had said.

She may have denied it, but Richard knew that this woman was Raven.

She looked different, he'd admit, but didn't he, too? They were, after all, five years older than they had been the last time they'd seen each other. Her hair was longer, silkier that he remembered, and no longer the shocking violet of her youth. And though her eyes were bluer now than he had remembered them, he was sure that the woman before him was Raven.

"Raven," he said again, and she turned to him once more, her eyes clearly displaying her annoyance.

"Look, mister," she chastised him. "I don't know who you are or what you want, but my name's not Raven and I'm pretty sure I don't know you."

She made to turn back to the barista, but Richard grabbed her arm in a moment of instinct.

"Raven," he said. "It's me. It's… Richard."

He daren't say Robin, lest the barista or any of the few customers in the café put two and two together, but Raven knew him, and he knew who he was. As Titans, he had told her his story on a rainy night as she told her his, and they knew each other.

Too late, Richard realized that she had known who she was the entire time and didn't want him in her life. Had that perhaps been the reason she had left the Titans in the first place?

Her eyes briefly flashed with sympathy but it was gone as she turned to grab what was now clearly tea. She said goodbye to the barista and whirled past Richard with a grace she had never lost.

Mindlessly, he followed her, not caring about the consequences. She was faster than he remembered, but she was still no match for the former protégé of the Batman, and he caught her up quickly.

"Why are you avoiding me, Rae?" he asked after grabbing her arm to pull her to a stop.

"I wanted my space. I thought you would have understood that, Robin."

He didn't bother to correct her; he knew she had called him Robin on purpose. She was connecting the man in front of her with the boy she had known in her Titan days.

He didn't understand what she meant by she needed her space. He couldn't mean at the present moment. He was touching her, true, but he was not really invading her personal bubble. But surely she couldn't mean in the past? He had always respected her boundaries then.

"I don't know what you mean," he admitted, reluctantly letting go of her arm.

She scoffed. "I needed to get out of that Tower. I couldn't stand it anymore."

Still, he didn't know what she meant. "What was wrong with the Tower? We all respected your space."

Her eyes danced with emotions. "Respected my boundaries? HA!" She crossed her arms under her chest and met his eyes with such an expression he wasn't sure how to react. "You respected them so much you wanted nothing to do with me,"

Her voice was full of venom and it threw Richard off. "Nothing to do with you? Are you kidding me? Raven, you were my best friend!"

"You sure had a funny way of showing it."

He felt guilty, like perhaps he had read Raven too well and she hadn't read him well enough. He took her by the arms, staring deep into her eyes, trying to find his best friend somewhere in their pools.

He felt, rather than heard her gasp when he probed their bond, the one forged after the incident with the hallucinogen in Slade's mask. He felt her emotions flow through her, and let her feel his. He understood now, what she was feeling, and when he leaned in to kiss her, he was received with apprehension but not malice.

He pulled away, leaving the kiss chaste. He smiled at her, the years of missing her melting away as he saw her roll her eyes and smile back at him.

"It's not too late, is it?" he asked, and Raven shook her head.

"No, not for you, anyway. For me, though?"

He laughed. "No, Rae. You're my best friend. It's never too late for you."

He hugged her, and he felt at home, there on the dangerous sidewalk of a hot Bludhaven night. But he was with his best friend again, reconciled with her, and things were right. He had put all his cards on the table, and it had paid off.

He had never felt so good about his decision to move to Bludhaven. In his opinion, it was the best damn choice he ever made.

END

So, that was really long for a oneshot, but I hope it was all worth it, even if there was next to no dialogue.

Points to you if you find the lyrics to "Higher Window" in the text. Some of them are obvious, but others of them are cleverly hidden.

To those who are going to ask: I have a backstory for why Raven is in Bludhaven. If you review and tell me you want to hear it, I'll write it and put it up (though I don't guarantee that it'll be on this site) somewhere and link it in my profile.

Please review! I want to know what you guys think of my playing around with the comics and if I should do stuff like this more often. Thanks!


	2. Raven

So now this has become a two-shot. This shouldn't be too long, just a brief account of how Raven ended up in Bludhaven and why she knew the barista, etc. I also want to dedicate this to my good friend Cadie, who will be celebrating her nineteenth birthday today. Happy birthday, girl!

All of Our Cards part 2

The long and short of it was Raven really, really didn't want to go to Bludhaven. She knew exactly who was there and knew that he patrolled the streets at night.

It was Gar who had told her, on the phone in a late night conversation. He had called to check up on her and tell her about his most recent girlfriend, a pretty red head he had met in veterinary school. She had congratulated him, happy and laughing. When she had told him about going to Bludhaven, Gar had gotten quiet, and then told her about Nightwing.

She had tried to get out of the medical conference, but she needed it to complete her medical degree, and no matter how she begged and cajoled (something that was very uncharacteristic of her), she couldn't get out of it or find a conference in a different city. She was going to Bludhaven, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Raven wasn't exactly sure what she was so nervous about going to the little crime ridden town. The likelihood of meeting Richard Grayson on a three day trip wasn't very high, and nor was it likely that she would run into Nightwing unless she was stupid enough to go on patrol.

And Raven wasn't stupid. She wasn't going to go into Rick's territory and assert herself, especially when she wasn't going to stay. It would be like a slap to the face, implying that he wasn't competent enough to run his own city.

So she left her uniform behind, knowing discretion is the better part of valour, not wanting to tempt herself in to taking to the skies.

She arrived in Bludhaven late in the afternoon, tired and jetlagged and fell asleep on the bed, not ready to go down to the hotel lobby and the legions of doctors ready to try and teach her the ways of the doctoring world. Knowing she couldn't get away with not going, she took a quick shower and headed downstairs, hoping that Rick, a cop now, wouldn't be in charge of security or something that would bring him to the conference and thus close to her.

Again, she wondered why she was so shaky. The chances of seeing him were so low that it wasn't even worth worrying over. And even if there was a chance she would see him, what did it matter? He had been her best friend once, had he not?

Well, that was all well and good, but if she really had been all that close to him, she wouldn't have felt the need to leave, would she? She had cared about him, she couldn't deny that, and they had been close once, but…

She had left instead.

The Tower had simply become too much to handle. There were constantly Titans, or people allied with the Titans, or people who wanted to be Titans, wandering through the Tower, invading her space and her privacy. More than once she had come home to find that someone was waiting outside her door, or, worse yet, actually inside her room, trying to talk to her or get a glance of her. After she had gotten to the point where she had to spell her door so that she was the only one who could get in or near her room, she had given up. She needed her space, and she certainly wasn't getting it at the Tower.

Of course, when she had found out that Robin had recruited Donna Troy, she felt replaced, even if she understood the need for that fifth member to fill the hole she had left. Still, she felt like she had been a little betrayed, and she was secretly a little happy when she'd heard that the new member hadn't done any good in taking her place and the Titans disbanded. It was petty, but really, it was how she felt.

So perhaps it was the events of the past that made her wary of her time in Bludhaven. As illogical as it was, Raven was afraid of meeting Richard here and having to explain everything to him. That was a large part of the reason she had kept contact with the rest of the Titans and not with Rick. She even, on occasion, talked to Donna Troy, whom she had met once when going to visit Kori. But she simply couldn't bring herself to keep of the façade of a friendship with Rick, because she felt like she had betrayed him. Had she even left a note when she left? She couldn't even remember.

So, okay, if she was nervous about running into Rick, she had to admit, it wasn't exactly unreasonable. She didn't want to deal with the pointing of fingers and the accusations that she should be able to take in stride, but knew she wouldn't.

He had always been able to get some sort of rise out of her.

She was somewhat prepared, therefore, when she was taking a walk one night, against her better judgment, when she saw a dark figure stalking on the rooftops above. She knew exactly who it was and her heart skipped a beat and then pounded that much faster when it resumed its beatings. She backed up against the nearest wall, hoping against hope that he wouldn't see her and that she could go about her business and leave Bludhaven the next day and go back to Ventura, the virtually crime free town she lived in now.

She was lucky and he didn't see her, too caught up in something else, or maybe seeing her and thinking her a simple pedestrian foolishly out for a stroll in a town where robbers and rapists lurked around every corner. A helpless girl in an unfamiliar town.

She couldn't help but smile at thinking herself helpless. She led a quiet life in Ventura, true, but it wasn't like she didn't still practice with her powers every now and then.

It wasn't until the next night, a few hours before her flight back home, that she really, truly saw him, ran into him.

She had been at a local coffee shop, owned by a girl she had met in the earlier years of her college years, talking to her, when she heard the bell on the door clink. She stiffened a bit, feeling his unmistakable aura standing very near to her, projecting his bafflement at seeing her. He was putting two and two together, comparing his memories of a younger Raven with the woman in front of him, even without seeing her face.

She was bracing herself and was ready when he tapped her shoulder. She could feel the mask she'd put up, one of being annoyed at the interruption of a man who may as well have been a stranger.

"Raven," he said, completely confident that he had found her. She was as sure that he was right.

"My name's Rachael, not Raven." She told him, using the alias she had assumed. "You've got the wrong girl."

She turned back to the counter and resumed her conversation with Amelia, the barista, shrugging when she asked who the handsome dark haired man was. Of course, Raven _did_ know who he was, but she didn't want her past coming back to haunt her.

"Raven," he said again, and she turned to face him, her eyes blazing with annoyance, but secretly stinging at the hurt of seeing him again.

"Look, mister," she chastised him. "I don't know who you think I am, but my name is _not_ Raven, and I don't know who you are."

She made to turn back to Amelia, but Rick grabbed her arm and spun her back around to face him. "Raven," he said, using her name for the third time, always the charm. "It's me. It's… Richard."

She almost wanted to laugh out loud. She knew that he wouldn't say Robin. People could and probably would be able to connect Robin to Nightwing and Nightwing to Detective Richard Grayson, Bludhaven P.D.

He had told her everything one night after her father's death, and she, in turn, told him everything about her life. She remembered that night and treasured it, delighting in the memory of rain on her skin.

Unable to face him, she slammed a ten dollar bill on the bar and stormed out, not knowing what she was doing, knowing that he would follow her. She could feel him following her, and wasn't at all shocked when his hand wrapped around her bicep, whirling her around to face him.

"Why are you avoiding me, Rae?"

No reason to correct him now, she thought. After all, Rae was a common shortened form of Rachael.

"I wanted my space. I thought you would have understood that, Robin."

She used his old name, connecting this handsome young soldier for justice to the energetic teen she had known in her younger days. She could tell that he didn't understand what she was talking about, and he said so.

"I had to leave that Tower. I couldn't stand it anymore."

"What was wrong with the Tower? We all respected your space."

She tried to stop the hysterical laugh bubbling at her lips, but she couldn't manage. "Respected my space? HA! You respected it so much that you wanted nothing to do with me!"

She wasn't sure where that had come from; perhaps some old insecurities come back to play mind games? She couldn't tell.

"Nothing to _do_ with you, Raven? Are you kidding me? You were my best friend!"

Her voice was cold, venomous, and she felt only a little bad for it. "Well you sure had a funny way of showing it."

He took her suddenly by the arms, looking deep into her eyes, as if he were searching for something he knew he would find. She hasped when he probed their bond, so long inactive. He understood now what she was feeling, and when he leaned in slowly to kiss her, he met no resistance.

He pulled away and Raven rolled her eyes but was smiling. "It's not too late, is it?" he asked, and she shook her head, black hair falling into her face.

"Not for you, no. But maybe for me?"

He laughed. "No, Rae, you're my best friend. I don't think it could ever be too late for you."

He hugged her, and she felt like her world, so unbalanced as of late, had finally shifted back into place.

She had never felt so good about her decision to travel to Bludhaven. In her opinion, it was the best damn decision she had ever made.

END (for real)

So yeah, that was just a companion chapter. A good portion of reviewers said that they would like to hear a little back story on why Raven was there, so this was born. Again, happy birthday to Cadie. Hope you have a good one!


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